Marc Vetri took a walk. He had to get out of the restaurant. He couldn’t look at the crowd — if you could call four tables a crowd — anymore. “I’ll be right back,” he told Jeff Benjamin, his partner, and walked outside, into the October night, down Spruce and up Broad. All the restaurants he passed were full.
How many of them had eggplant parm and meatballs on their menus, two dishes Vetri did not serve but people who wandered in off the street kept asking about? There’s nothing wrong with that stuff, Vetri would reply, but this is more, you know, food from Italy. Incredulous, they’d respond, Well, that’s from Italy too.
